Major travel chaos warning as ‘some airlines have cancelled flights’ into and from Dublin Airport due to strike

A MAJOR disruption to flights to and from Ireland is expected throughout Thursday due to an air traffic controllers’ strike, it has emerged.

Any flights to and from France are affected, with Dublin Airport asking passengers to check directly with their airline to see if their flight is included.

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This includes departures and arrivals from Ireland’s biggest airport.

Flights to and from Paris, Basel, Carcassone, La Rochelle, Lourdes, Nice, Toulouse, Biarritz and Lyon on Thursday have already been listed as cancelled this evening.

While the biggest union representing the French ATC workers, the SNCTA, said it will call off the strike on Wednesday after a last-minute deal with management over working conditions, many airlines went ahead with cancellations due to the expected disruption after France’s civil aviation authority asked firms to cut flights.

Talks are also ongoing with other trade unions representing the workers.

Dublin Airport said on X, formerly Twitter, just after 9pm tonight: “Due to a planned Air Traffic Control strike in France, some airlines have cancelled flights into and out of Dublin Airport tomorrow (Thursday).

“Passengers are advised to check directly with their airline for updates regarding specific flights.”

Aer Lingus said “there will be some delays and cancellations to flights on the Aer Lingus network on Thursday 25 April 2024”.

It added: “We continue to monitor the situation and will update customers via our website or SMS messaging should the situation impact our flight schedule.

‘Check flight status before departing’

“If your Aer Lingus flight is cancelled or rescheduled our Customer Care team will contact you directly or through your travel agent.

“You will have the option to rebook free of charge at a later date, go to ‘manage my booking’ or call one of our customer service agents on (01) 761 7834 from Ireland and 0333 004 5000 from the UK.

“We advise customers planning to travel on Thursday 25 April 2024 to please check their flight status before departing for the airport.”

Ryanair said it had been forced to cancel over 300 flights due to the originally planned French ATC strike on Thursday.

‘France’s failure’

The airline added in a statement: “This is due to France’s failure to protect overflights during its national air strikes.

“Even though it’s French ATC that are striking, most disrupted passengers are not flying to/from France but overfly French airspace en route to their destination (e.g., UK – Greece, Spain, Italy).

“French law unfairly protects domestic flights which means French flights are protected but non-French flights get cancelled.”

Ryanair then called on EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to “take urgent action to protect overflights, which she has failed to do for the last five years”.

Freedom of movement ‘denied’

It added: “EU citizens’ freedom of movement is being denied by these ATC strikes and we call on passengers to join our campaign by signing our ‘Protect Overflights: Keep EU Skies Open’ petition, which has over 2.1m signatures from Europe’s fed up passengers.

“Ryanair and its 200m passengers demand that the EU Commission take the following measures in order to protect overflights during French ATC strikes;

1. Protect French overflights by law during ATC strikes as they do in Greece, Italy and Spain
2. Allow Europe’s other ATCs to manage flights over France while French ATC are on strike
3. Mandate that French ATC unions must engage in binding arbitration before calling strikes”

CEO Michael O’Leary added: “French air traffic controllers are free to go on strike, that’s their right, but we should be cancelling French flights, not flights leaving Ireland, going to Italy, or flights from Germany to Spain or Scandinavia to Portugal.

Action call

“The European Commission under Ursula von der Leyen has failed for five years to take any action to protect overflights and the single market for air travel.

“We’re again calling on her to take action to protect overflights which will eliminate over 90% of these flight cancellations.

“In June, we will have European elections, we encourage everyone to vote in these elections and demand your MEP and the European Commission to take action to protect overflights.

“We can’t have the skies over Europe repeatedly closed because French Air Traffic Controllers are going on strike.

“Protect overflights during national ATC strikes, reduce flight cancellations and disruptions and let’s have a better summer for all of Europe’s citizens and visitors.”